The Regional Air Pollution Information and Simulation (RAINS) model

Anthropogenic activities such as energy consumption, industrial activities and agriculture are major driving forces of emissions of air pollutants. Their future development has a strong influence on the level of future emissions and on the potential and costs for maintaining emissions at environmentally acceptable levels. Unfortunately, it is an ambitious task to accurately model the future development of anthropogenic economic activities at the level of detail that is required for the assessment of air pollution. A number of economic theories compete in this field, and their modelling entails complex approaches and a variety of detailed assumptions, which are difficult to quantify on an undisputed basis. Thus, as a first choice, it has been decided not to embark with the RAINS model on the modelling of future economic activities, but to derive projections from other sources as an exogenous input to the RAINS model.